Effect of pre-strain at elevated temperature on strain hardening of twinning-induced plasticity steels

The effect of different tensile pre-strains at 400°C on subsequent room-temperature deformation behaviour of a Fe–Mn–C twinning-induced plasticity steel has been investigated. We report a surprising finding that the strain hardening at a constant strain rate and ambient temperature depends solely on the flow stress irrespective of the strain history. An important consequence of this observation is that the rate of generation of twins is controlled by the flow stress and is not an explicit function of strain.